Asianux is starting to pick up steam in its bid to dominate the Asian Linux market.

The joint venture between China's Red Flag Software and Japan's Miracle Linux, which was announced in January, has just released its first public beta.

As part of the Asianux 1.0 public beta release announcement, the two partners also revealed that they had signed up over 40 industry vendors for early certification on the platform. The Asianux Certification Program ensures compliance and compatibility as well as offering vendors early access to Red Flag and Miracle Linux products. The certification program also extends additional resources and technical support to applicants.

Among the vendors noted by the Asianux partners are such industry notables as Hitachi, NEC, Computer Associates, Toshiba and Oracle. Both Red Flag and Miracle Linux were founded in June of 2000 with partner support from Oracle (Miracle Linux is actually a subsidiary of Oracle, which has a 54 percent stake).

"Increasing software and hardware certification will accelerate enterprise Linux in Asia," said Takeshi Sato, president of Miracle Linux in a statement. "Cooperation among our partners to promote solutions on Asianux will ultimately benefit customers as it will give them greater choice."

Miracle Linux recently reported 86 percent year over year sales growth for the first half of its fiscal year 2004 (June 2003 to November 2003). The full final version of Asianux is expected to be available in Japan and China by mid June 2004.

According to IDC Japan statistics quoted by Asianux, the Linux market in China is expected to reach $41.9 million by 2008, and in Japan $105 million by 2007.